That describes me in the Columbus Architectural Salvage warehouse on the North Side
recently.

And that was only one of four stops on a whirlwind old-house-lovers tour that my daughter and I
took, ostensibly in search of the perfect window for our front door.

But knowing that finding the frosted glass we want in the right size would be almost impossible,
we decided to make it a fact-finding mission.

We started at Harbor Freight on E. Dublin-Granville Road, which is a store full of low-priced
tools and supplies. (Think of a Big Lots store full of tools.) I could spend hours and hundreds of
dollars there.

Next, we stopped at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore outlet on Westerville Road. It’s full of
used windows, doors, appliances, hardware, cabinets, countertops and all sorts of donated
materials. It’s a trove of low-cost materials. And amazingly, we found a leaded-glass window that I
liked and would have fit our door, but one of the small panes was cracked. Oh, and my daughter
hated it.

After lunch at the North Market, we headed north to Columbus Architectural Salvage at 1580 Clara
St., which is a nondescript building between 11th and 17th avenues on the eastern side of the Ohio
Expo Center.

My past experiences with such salvage operations took me to barns haphazardly filled with
treasures pulled from old houses — with an emphasis on haphazard. No cataloging of materials, no
obvious planning behind storage or display. The expectation seemingly was that you’d be willing to
spend hours or days pawing through the merchandise in hopes of finding the perfect window, or
whatever you sought.

I even visited one years ago at which the proprietor showed up after my wife and I had begun
looking through sheds of goodies and barked, “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, we were just leaving,” was my thought.

Chris Sauer, the owner of Columbus Architectural Salvage, is just the opposite in personality
and in management of the items salvaged from buildings across Ohio.

“I’m a preservationist at heart,” Sauer said. “I don’t like to see old buildings go down.”

But the reality is that some will be demolished, and if the buildings can’t be kept intact, it
makes sense that someone should keep the good materials from ending up in the landfill and make
them available for someone to use, he said.

Sauer and his wife renovated a house in Victorian Village while he worked six years as an
assistant historic preservation officer for the city of Columbus. He left the city and started the
salvage business in 2006 in Grandview Heights, then moved to the warehouse on Clara Street.

The lobby at the warehouse is filled with delicate hardware from the past two centuries —
doorknobs, decorative hinges, handles, keys, screws and other odds and ends. All are neatly
arranged by size and design, easing the hunting process.

Behind the massive (salvaged) wooden doors leading to the warehouse is a remarkable display of
mantels, windows, doors, bathroom fixtures, lighting, cabinets, furniture, collectibles and even
some marble statues.

Customers wander the displays oohing and aahing at the sight of so many well-preserved pieces of
the past. A young girl visiting with her family squealed at the sight when she entered the first of
many rooms.

Sauer started adding collectibles such as furniture, historic bricks and street signs to the
warehouse, he said, because “some people can’t use a big, wooden room divider but they would like
to take something home.”

We didn’t find the window we wanted, but we left with a couple of those small items.

Some customers are looking for materials to fix their old houses, Sauer said. But a growing
number are looking for architectural features to repurpose — decorative, outdoor eave brackets that
will become interior shelf supports, for example.

“Pinterest has done a lot to help with ideas for that,” he said.

For online shopping, Sauer’s team regularly updates its website at www.ColumbusArchi
tecturalSalvage.com with new items and after sales.

My daughter and I ended our old-house-lovers tour at Franklin Art Glass Studios at 222 E.
Sycamore St. in German Village, where we admired stained-glass windows and talked with custom sales
manager Garrett M. Pilarski. He took a look at photos of our front door and gave us good advice for
finishing our front door.

That and a visit to a nearby Starbucks was the perfect end to our tour.

Alan D. Miller is a Dispatch managing editor who writes about old-house repair and historic
preservation.